


Darkness

by m0ssy_gremlin



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, Dark, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 07:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21249650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m0ssy_gremlin/pseuds/m0ssy_gremlin
Summary: Morgana does not know how much time has passed since she was dragged here, screaming and bleeding for the creature she loves. But it has been for a long time, she knows.Or: Morgana in the Sarrum's captivity.





	Darkness

The darkness drips.

Morgana feels it swallow her, cold and sharp and bitterly sweet, kissing across her skin and the insides of her teeth, dragging the blood up from her veins to where she can taste it on her fingertips. Taste it; her tongue thick and bloated between stiff lips; a cruel tang, a feverish cool.

She does not know how much time has passed since she was dragged here, screaming and bleeding for the creature she loves, blackened by anger for the war she was forced to fight, the surrender she was forced to give.

But it has been for a long time, she knows.

She knows because she feels her magic feed into her from the ground like a herald, and feels the moons passing beyond her reach, like looking into a mirror upside-down, through to an inverted world where the sun blazes orange at midnight and the light bruises her skin with sweetness.

She knows because she counts heartbeats under her fingers, hers and Aithusa’s, soft and uncertain as whispers, each thump a timeless second.

She senses Aithusa’s breath, stirring wet and sickly against her bruises. Aithusa’s scales are smooth beneath her nails, black with blood and dirt and rot, and she can feel the darkness drip as she tap, tap, taps heartbeats into their skin.

****

Each time the cries wake her, she shakes for hours, endlessly, until her muscles scream and freeze and stop moving.

She is curled up by the wall, as far as she can get from the corner where it reeks the strongest of piss and bile, when the cold in her bones turns to ice and she wakes, sobbing so hard her chest hurts.

Aithusa writhes in pain beside her, screaming and screaming and tearing at herself with claws of steel and bone, as if by stripping away her skin she can make herself smaller, make herself fit into the cold, unyielding stones that breathe with ice but never move. Stone by stone, crushing her infant body into malalignment.

Her hands shake as she tries to ease her pain, pushing what little magic she can still find into Aithusa’s deformed body, urging her into a dreamless sleep.

When she lies still, Morgana takes her and feels what she cannot see in the darkness, fingers prickling, mapping out the wounds with her hands. She strokes her bloodied scales, tender and quiet over open wounds. The festering cuts and sharp angles of bone over starved flesh. The milk white of Aithusa’s baby teeth between a broken jaw. She closes her eyes and heals as much as she can.

She wonders if it will ever be enough.

****

Morgana dreams of a green meadow, where the grass is like velvet against her face when she lies in it, where the sunlight slants through whispering branches and dapples the glade with brightness and something _alive_.

Aithusa is there, too, happy and peppy and silly with joy, tumbling over in the air with her wings, proud and strong, swooping up to the sky and then back down again, roaring all the while. She chases squirrels through trees and hisses when a dragonfly flies too close to Morgana’s face and she shrieks. When she tires of her games she lays her head on Morgana’s belly and they lie there together, tired, quiet and content.

Morgana, for a first time in a long, long time, feels happy. She knows it cannot last.

****

She wakes to darkness, and her heart hardens just a little more.

She wonders what the Sarrum’s screams will sound like.

**Author's Note:**

> Ehhh not really that pleased with this but I'm tired of fiddling with it, so here goes.


End file.
